Delta 4

Gearing up for a predawn blastoff July 31, launch crews have positioned a Delta 4-Heavy rocket in the starting blocks on a seaside launch complex at Cape Canaveral as engineers inside a tightly-controlled clean room a few miles away put the final touches on a NASA probe that will travel closer to the sun than any mission before.

Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center tasked with overseeing launches of scientific satellites and interplanetary probes will be responsible later this year for ensuring six major missions safely get into space over a span of a little more than six months, beginning with the launch of NOAA’s new GOES-S weather observatory on an Atlas 5 rocket March 1.

A United Launch Delta 4 rocket lifted off Friday from the SLC-6 launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, powering into orbit from a historic seaside complex originally developed for crewed missions.

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket climbed into orbit Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a top secret spy satellite, adding a new set of eyes in the sky for the U.S. government’s intelligence community and nudging part of the Delta 4 family closer to retirement.

The 32-story-tall mobile service tower at the Delta 4’s launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was retracted away from the rocket Thursday in advance of a planned liftoff with a top secret National Reconnaissance Office payload.

Technicians are putting the final touches on a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket set for liftoff Thursday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, a military base on California’s Central Coast, with a top secret spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The launch of a top secret National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California has been pushed back from Dec. 13 until no earlier than Jan. 10 to complete software validation on the Delta 4 rocket’s new avionics system, United Launch Alliance announced Wednesday.